


arts and crafts is all I need

by twistedingenue



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2017-12-21 22:35:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/905748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedingenue/pseuds/twistedingenue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint's seen some weird stuff working nights in the dorms, but Coulson trying to comfort a crying girl is probably the weirdest. Saying that she can move into his spare room, well, that's just being a good friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It's her voice that gets to Clint first.  
   
"Phil," the girl's voice, while low-pitched, carries from the main common area behind the front desk where Clint's sorting the mail that the other residents of the dorm have left behind. Wrong addresses, no such person, and junk mail of all types, but he's far more interested in the concept that Coulson has a girl in the common room and she's practically whining at him, "Phil. Come on, I just need a place to stay."  
   
Clint doesn't snoop. He's working. It's not his fault that he just needs to walk closer to the door that opens out to the room.  
   
"You have a place to stay. Your house. Where you live. With your mother. It's February, shouldn't you be in school?"  
   
Clint looks out the half open door, then gives up and walks through the mailroom until he’s just at the door. He’s snooping, he doesn’t care anymore. Coulson's guest is a short, curvy brunette with a military surplus duffle bag stuffed completely full at her feet. She's wearing a heavy winter coat, one of those white beret type hats that don't seem like they should actually keep a head warm, more fashion accessory than practical usage. Coulson hasn't signed her in yet, snuck in through the back using Coulson's administrative set of keys. But it's Coulson, and he hasn't met an RA yet who was such a stickler for the rules that didn't also know how to bend them.  
   
The girl digs her heels in, "I'm not going home."  
   
"How did you even get here?" Coulson grabs her arm, and while she doesn't look put out by the touch, she does screw up her face and jerk back her arm a bit.  
   
"I took the last of my money and took the train, it comes right into town and I came straight here. I am not going home." He kind of likes this stubborn girl. Anyone that can unnerve Coulson, a personal favorite pastime of his, is someone he wants to know.  
   
Coulson shifts his weight and it feels wrong to see him so nervous and unsteady. He's usually unflappable, dealing with the student's problems with such ease that there's never a cause for complaint afterwards. He's handled explosions with more grace. That was a great summer session. A real winner of a student body.  
   
"What happened Darcy? Why aren't you in school?" He asks finally.  
   
Darcy's eyebrows knit together with a sense of wariness, "I graduated early in December. I sent out announcements, I sent one here, didn't you get it?”  
   
"No." Phil admits, "And mom didn't say anything. And she would have, she's been proud of you."  
   
Darcy is about ready to hit something, "So that's another thing. Great. I'll add it to the list."  She sits on her duffle, falling over on herself, "I gave them to mom to mail at work.” She huffs out a breath and shakes her head, “She never sent them out. She also didn't give me any of my acceptance letters or the scholarship and grant notices. I found them all yesterday, and this was the only school that I didn't miss the Summer acceptance deadlines for and it’s your school and... and...." Darcy hitches through tears.

Coulson, he's never called the guy by anything but his last name, kneels down and puts his around her, and it's awkward. Coulson doesn't spend much time on empathy, of really getting down and connecting. But points have to be given here, he’s trying.

"Well, I at least gotta tell my mom, alright? Aunt Karen's gonna be sick with worry if she didn't want you to leave home in the first place." Coulson's voice picks up steam and confidence as he starts working through a plan, "So she can at least know you are okay. But I don't have room for you Darcy. And it's too late in the night to sign in a minor."

"I'm not --" she balks affectionately, composing herself. Darcy isn't a tall woman by any means, but when she rolls her shoulders back her entire body just grows, "My birthday was last week, dumbass." 

"She can stay with me," Clint finds himself saying, opening the door the whole way. Coulson freezes up, his muscles tensing in embarrassment and Darcy looks up from the mess of her hair and running mascara. Clint couldn't handle it if she looked at him like a savior, what he's totally unprepared for is the matching expressions from the pair, twin faces of thin lips and heavy mental processing. "Tasha's room is going empty while she's studying abroad." he shrugs, because it's also very quiet in his apartment right now, and somehow without a girl around, it doesn't smell very nice either. He cleans, sure, but it just doesn't smell right.

Darcy wipes away the remnants of her crying and turns her head to look at Coulson. Her hair is very pretty, even matted from a train ride that, shit, had to be the late train being very late if it's already 3 am. Clint's only had to deal with a few fellow students coming in so far, Tuesdays aren't big socializing nights at this end of campus.

"Phil, please?" her eyes are wide and pleading, and really very blue.

Clint takes the apartment key off of the carabiner and holds it out to Coulson. "Take her over, I'll cover for you tonight if anyone needs anything. I'l call Hill if I need to." Clint doesn't really think he'll need Maria, the other graduate RA on staff who swings on night shifts, but Coulson always appreciates knowing that other people have back-up plans.

"You're off at what, 6?" Coulson asks, even though he knows the answer. They've sat through enough long nights together. Clint at the front desk with his textbooks, Coulson grading papers in the first floor office with the door open. Clint nods and Coulson takes the key.

"Oh thank you!" Darcy leaps back up and impulsively wraps her arms around him, just as quick as can be before she's picking up her duffle, "Won't regret it. Promise."

"It's only temporary," Coulson assures him, "Just until we get everything sorted out." 

Clint comes home that morning to Coulson passed out in the recliner that he and Natasha had rescued one night from the side of the road, and Darcy is ruthlessly playing Borderlands on the xbox he liberated from Tony and Bruce's apartment.

"Hey, thanks man," she says as he settles down a seat away from her on the sofa, "I don't even know you and you are possibly my hero." She turns her head and smiles, "You got a name, hero?"

"Clint Barton, hero at large," he replies back, "You should wake Coulson up. He TA's an 8 am today before his own classes." Clint's smarter than that, and arranged so that his classes are in the afternoon whenever possible whenever he has to man the night shift.

"Darcy Lewis, scrappy runaway from batshit mother and Phil’s cousin, pleased to meet you." She's still bright and awake, working on adrenaline and nerves. Clint picks up the half can of beer thats on her side, "Hey, come on, don't be like that," she protests, but Clint downs the rest of it in a single go as she watches.

"Wake him up," he says, crunching the can in his hands and nodding towards Coulson, "I'm going to bed. Tasha's room is to the left, has its own bathroom and everything."

"Thank you," she says quietly as Clint gets back up and throws the can into an open recycling bin. He can feel her eyes on him as he walks to the right and into his own room.


	2. Chapter 2

Darcy is equal parts too young by halves and too jaded by far, and it’s very different than when Natasha was here. Clint wasn’t that stupid about having her stay in Natasha’s room, he had called her first thing, which was bad because time zones (he is stupid about some things) but he knows that Tasha will appreciate knowing that someone is in there.

“There is a box.” She says, her voice rough with sleep, “It’s locked, and its none of your business, but I would appreciate it if you would move it. It’s at the top of the closet.”

“Tash, are you having me move your sex toys?” Clint asks with a grin.

“Do you think I would leave for several months without them?” she replies bluntly, “Who is the girl again?”

“Coulson’s cousin,” Clint lays out flat on his own bed, the one actual thing of his own in the room. He’d bought in the bed, storing the furnished one in a small storage unit furnished by the building. Or maybe he just stuffed it in Tony’s place. He has a tendency to do that. But he lays on the bed to talk to Natasha, and thinks on the girl that Coulson had brought in. “She’s having some sort of spat with her mother or something and ran off. Guess he’s the safe person in the family or something.”

Natasha hums a little bit, a sign that she’s near back asleep, and he shouldn’t keep her up, “So family then. Family of Coulson, welcome in my room. Get my things out of there and if she’s still there when I get back, we’ll talk.”

 

*

Living with Natasha had certain benefits. She was neat and tidy, and would clean in her few spare moments, and would tease Clint about their opposite schedules during the few hours that they overlapped. Darcy seemed to always be heading to bed when he came in.

“I’ve always been a bit of a night owl,” she explains one early afternoon, Phil (and he’s Phil now, since he’s at the apartment nearly as much as Clint is himself) working on a laptop in the other room. Darcy’s making breakfast with ingredients he’s pretty sure his refrigerator did not hold three days ago. “One of the many things my mother and I disagreed on. My work got done, I did well in school. Got done faster than expected, but god forbid I sleep when I got home from school and wake up after midnight to start my day.” She dices peppers and onions and bits of ham for omelets with a practiced ease, and this apartment never smelled quite so good.

Darcy cooks and while she and Phil argue over what is going to happen to her, she bakes biscuits from scratch, and pours gravy over them before Coulson goes to class and does it again when Clint wakes up. Over the next few days, he finds lunches and dinner in tupperware, labeled for him.

“You don’t have to do that,” he finally says after a week of the best food he’s eaten in years, and he doesn’t mean it at all. What he wants to say is, “please continue to feed me, preferably for life. Stay forever, Natasha won’t mind.” But he continues with, “I can fend for myself.”

“Please,” Darcy says with in a low amused voice, “Where I’m from, we have a thing called manners. Or we would if my mother wasn’t a freak of nature who doesn’t understand the concept of …” she looks off for a moment and takes a deep breath and slowly lets go of the knife in her hands, “Sorry, I’m still having a moment.”

She hasn’t talked about it, and why would she? He’s just the person that’s opened up the shoebox apartment that’s near enough to campus that her cousin won’t worry, and he’s close enough to Phil  (the man who now passes out on his couch regularly, having switched so many shifts around that he doesn’t know if it’s day or night until he gets outside) that Phil won’t worry about, well Clint doesn’t know because Clint is of course an upstanding individual.

Darcy closes her eyes and spreads out her hands and lets out her breath before picking back up the knife, “The point is that I don’t feel right not contributing to this place. And I can’t pay rent, and I can’t do your homework, I don’t even know what you are studying, and I can’t even beat the high scores off your games. And whoever that Tony guy is, I’m sure he’s a cheat.”

“Kinesiology.” He says to Darcy’s confused and blank face, and its not the first time that he thinks it’s cute, and pushes that out of his brain because Phil’s cousin. Phil’s cousin who just turned eighteen less than a month ago, who would still be in high school if she weren’t apparently the highly efficient and motivated sort. “It’s the uh, study of human movement. Sports stuff, mostly.” He has to explain his major a lot, and still most of the time time it’s dismissed by most people.

“So, like dancing except it’s not about the art but the practicality?” Darcy smiles with distraction.

Clint smiles in gratitude to someone who might get it, “There’s always beauty to how the body moves, girlie, the way every action is all your parts working together in the best way it can.” He huffs out a little laugh under his breath, “Let me show you instead.”

He keeps his bow in his room, not exactly locked up, but stored where he can have easy access. He still doesn’t use anything fancy, not after years moving from home to home, just a good solid recurve. He strings it quickly and pulls out an arrow shaft, no head, just the nock and walks back into the living room.

“Come here?” He half asks, and Darcy lays down the knife and washes her hands and joins him. “Watch me.”   As he lifts and begins draw back the string with the nocked blunt arrow so slowly he shakes with it, he says, “It looks like I use the muscles, but everything really starts with the bones and creating the right line of force. Everything has to travel, and you want to use as little muscle  exertion as possible.”

And Darcy does watch, but her eyes are pinned to where his T-shirt rides up on his bicep as his arm goes back, perfectly symmetrical and in line, without wasted movement. He holds it at full draw, nice and easy, “There’s a common misperception about drawing back. You push just as much as you pull, and your whole body needs to be aligned and symmetrical. And then, you move, and a simple movement is….”

“Gorgeous,” When he looks over at Darcy, there’s a faint blush to her cheeks and she’s biting on her bottom lip. She quickly stammers, “I mean, can I try?”

He lowers the bow and reverses his line of motion, and nods, holding out his hand to her. He uses the leverage of her grip to drape his arm over her shoulder and deposit the bow in her left hand and the arrow in the other and helps her nock it and stabilize it before stepping back. It wobbles a bit, all beginners do, not knowing how to grip the nock with gentle strength and pressure in the grip of a couple of crooked fingers.

Darcy laughs as she chases the balance and steadies the weight, and something in her body leans back when he takes most of his weight off of her, touching now just the wrist as he helps her draw back the string, “Don’t arch your back, “ he says into her ear, “Engage your abs and pull your chest downwards,” and it’s like not thinking of elephants, he looks down too and fuck, this could be a really bad idea, and he just doesn’t seem to care, because Darcy’s cleavage has just gone from, yes, those are tits, whatever, girls have them to some florid romance novel description that involves the words heaving and bountiful

He rolls his eyes up quickly, but he can’t help now lingering his fingers and keeping her shoulders in the right place as she struggles to fully draw the string. She shakes with the exertion, and for someone not used to it, the draw weight would be difficult, it takes practice to go from nothing to even a fifty pound draw.

“I don’t think I can hold this for much longer,” she grins, turning her head to look straight at Clint. “But wow, thats….”

“Gorgeous,” he repeats her own words, and steps forward again farther into her personal space, and there’s far less tension in the bowstring than between them.

 

“Hey, Darcy I’m —“ Coulson, Phil, half jogs into the room and Darcy startles forward, blessedly not firing or worse, dry loosing the string when the arrow topples from her grip, and Coulson trails off on the words, “…uh, that is, have you seen my International Disaster Management book, I’ve got to get to class.” He’s looking at Darcy, but all the weight of his stare is on Clint, all hard lines and supporting every bit of his calm expression with polite intensity.

“I put it back in your bag,” she replies, a little breathless and pale, but her voice steady.

Coulson passes Clint on his way to his bag, “Talking. Later.”

Clint has this overwhelming urge to call him sir, but nods instead. Yeah, that’s not a conversation to look forward to.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who doesn't love a little archery porn? I love a little archery porn. I may have watched a lot of shirtless archery videos for uh, research.


	3. Chapter 3

Darcy had high tailed it—red-faced—into Natasha's room, shutting and locking the door and blaring music for the rest of that day until Clint went to work. If she had unlocked it after that, he didn't know. He'd wanted to talk to her, try to figure something out before he ran into Coulson at the dorm that night, so he'd know what to say.

Well, what is there to say? Darcy's cute, can cook, has a hell of a personality and Clint doesn't think he's too much of a slouch. But all there's been is tension, not even anything ready to happen. So why should he worry about going into work? There's nothing to say. Nothing happened.

There are perfectly good reasons why Clint has bunkered down in the mailroom, only coming out when someone needs to be checked in. Perfectly reasonable reasons, even. He could probably even name them if someone called him on it. From here, Clint can see that Coulson's office door has remained stubbornly open, waiting for anyone to come in, unlike usual, when he has it just open enough so that he can technically say "my door is always open." Tonight, it's actually open, and he's calmly working inside.

It's about three in the morning, when the front desk is deadest (the stride of prides start in soon, but not quite yet) when Phil stops his typing. Clint can hear him take a long breath, closes his eyes and waits for it. There's not many footsteps between the mailroom and his office.

"Clint," Right, there it is. He’s had his sparks flying moment with Darcy, and now he’s got to face Coulson for it. "You got a moment?" It's not really a question, even though Coulson inflects it that way. The way his eyebrow raises slowly and the controlled way he's holding himself betrays the simplicity in his voice.

Clint nods. From the floor. Where he was most assuredly not hiding from this moment. Not at all. He follows Coulson to his office (and if he was Phil in his head for a short while, that does not apply right now) and he word vomits all over the place. “Okay, geeze, Coulson, I’m sorry. She’s your cousin, I can back off. It was just a momentary thing, won’t happen again.”

Coulson blinks, long and slow, “Okay, glad you got that off your chest. Now tell me the truth.”

The truth? The truth is that there is an unfamiliar girl living in his apartment, and she’s far more motivated than he’s ever been, and did he mention that she’s cute? But crap, she’s not even a freshman yet and that is sort of a problem, even if Clint is only a sophomore but he started school late. Not everyone gets scholarships and, and well, “I think I like your cousin. “

“Well that much was obvious, thank you.” Coulson rubs his forehead, “It pains me to say this, but she deserves a little fun at least.” He settles back down in his chair and invites Clint to do the same. “Look, let me tell you a story, okay? I’m like, what, eight years older than Darcy?” He shakes his head with the force of memories behind it, “When Darcy was eight she won a scholarship to some sleepaway camp. Art, I think. Maybe theater. Something like that. Except her mother didn’t want her to go, her little baby girl should never leave her, so she hid all the information from Darcy — just like she’s doing now. Darcy knew she had won some sort of contest and told my mother during a chance phone call. We lived four hours away then, and I’m sixteen years old, but mom packed me up in the car, told me I was getting some driving practice in and we drove over. My mother was so angry, we knew my aunt was a little,” Phil makes a vague gesture, “something not right going on. But Darcy was always so upbeat and happy, that she figured that her life must have some sort of order. Anyways, I’m sixteen and the last thing I want to do on a weekend is be at my aunt’s house helping my baby cousin pack for camp. ”

Clint can believe that. Even straightlaced and rule-bound Phil Coulson had to have been a teenager, and never wanted to be at home when there was more fun to be had.

“And I asked her if she had done anything fun with her friends over the summer so far, and she looks down and says that she doesn’t really have any friends because her mom doesn’t really let her go anywhere but home after school. She’d never even been to a sleepover or dinner at someone else’s house.” He shakes his head, “Until I left for school, every so often, I would drive the four hours to get her out of the house. I took her to her first movie and snuck some friends she had made at school with us.” He looks sharply at Clint, “So when I say she needs to have a little fun, that’s what I mean. That’s been her life until now and I don’t think she knows what to do with that.”

Clint tries to think back to whenever he’s heard Coulson talk so much and with so much emotion. He’s got to admit he hasn’t — Coulson is generally the dictionary illustration of unflappable. Dorm room flooding because the idiots above you set off the sprinkler system? He’ll help you move what’s still dry out, hand you a bunch of forms and set the work in motion for the assholes to be disciplined. Failing? He’s walked people over to the study center to set up tutors. If a sinkhole opened up underneath your car in the parking lot, the first person there won’t be the police, your insurance agent or the fire department, it will be Phil Coulson with a clipboard.

“What I am not saying,” Phil finishes with a deceptive smile, “Is for you to screw her over in any way. Darcy is bright and sheltered and so far out of her depth that she needs a little something to occupy her.”

“And I’m a little something?” And okay, Clint still isn’t much of a slouch, but hey, words can hurt.

“And you are a good guy who treats women like people, even if you are a bit of an ass. More than I can say for most of her peers.” Coulson looks down at his laptop, “I don’t even understand how the guys in 14G figured out where to get all those packing peanuts. I didn’t think they were that bright.”

“They aren’t,” Clint snorts, “It’s the girls next door that come up with the plans, the boys just execute them.”

The sun shines far too bright when he gets home, but someone has thoughtfully closed the blackout curtains in the living room and in his room. And that someone is passed out on the couch with a plateful of muffins on the coffee table. Clint kneels down in front of Darcy, moving back an errant lock of hair because he really can’t help himself. Darcy’s eyes jolt wide open, and she’s slightly freaked out by the proximity, reflexively making herself smaller on the couch.

“Hey, hey, hey….” Clint says, backing off himself because that was not the intention at all, “sorry, didn’t really mean to wake you.”

Darcy buries her face into the cushion and mumbles with the ramblings of sleep, “I meant to be back in my room by now. I hope Phil didn’t absolutely mortify you or anything. I’m sorry, I’m such a kid and you looked so…I’m sure its nothing —”

Clint grins, “Darcy, you want to go out sometime? I’d say dinner, but meals are kinda opposite for me.”

Her cheeks are blushing red when she slowly turns her head, biting her lip in a freely given but shy smile. It’s a pretty good start, he thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sometimes, it's really nice to take a break from my big emotional fic writing and have Coulson give Clint a shovel talk. That's just how it goes.


	4. Chapter 4

**Natasha**

So it’s not alright, not when Clint realizes that his usual way of dating, which is somewhat along the lines of nonexistent, isn’t going to work for Darcy. He tends to not-date. That is, he’s hanging out with someone and then boom, there’s kissing. Which is all well and fantastic, but that’s not how this is going to work. He knows he likes Darcy. He just doesn’t know much about her, which is supposed to be the point of dating. Right?

Clint’s very careful and considerate and checks time zones before he calls Natasha. He even almost gets it right, and only wakes Natasha up from a nap.

“Last I checked, you are not a child, Clint,” she says, just a little chiding, “You are around women all the time, yes? Do the same things you’d normally do, just hold her hand while you do that.”

“Tasha, I am mostly around women in class or because I am checking them in after they come in from their walk of shame, stride of pride whatever. I am not holding Darcy’s hand for either.”

“Surely, you are around other women on occasion.” Natasha is bored of this conversation, and her voice is shaky with sleep. He knows he’s lucky, she doesn’t show that part of herself, quiet and relaxed and vulnerable to very many people. Actually, he knows he’s lucky because just before he’s about to answer, he hears her soft snores and knows that she has fallen back asleep. There’s a thud when her phone hits the floor.

**Tony**

You’d think with all the dates Tony has been on, he’d at least offer up some good advice on what to do on one. And he does have some good advice, but none of it is appropriate for a first date with a girl who, as far as Clint knows, has never been alone with a guy that wasn’t her cousin. That wasn’t Phil, perennial good guy, not a bit of a fuck up like he is.

“Barton, the secret with women is,” Tony says handing over the Xbox controller and a spot on the ‘I’m slumming it because I secretly feel bad about being a rich jackass’ couch, “Don’t be yourself. Be the person they expect you to be.”

“I’ve been myself the entire time she’s known me, I think she’d notice if I suddenly had a personality transplant.” 

Tony scoffs, and rolls his eyes, more at the start up time on the xbox, not as much at Clint, “Look, longshot, she’s a girl. She’d probably like girly shit. Take her to a show or something, drama department is bound to have something, or maybe the art students are showing off their post-modern woodcarvings or some shit. Show her that your sensitive.”

Clint stares at Tony, his eyebrows knitting together, incredulous, “How did you ever convince Pepper to be your girlfriend?”

“Dashing good looks, a Tetris score like you wouldn’t believe, and an over-reliance on the few people that can tolerate me.”

**Steve**

“I don’t know why you are asking me this,” Steve says when Clint shows up at the studio. Steve’s working on some project or another that’s actually got him stripped to t-shirt, something that generally doesn’t happen unless 1)He’s currently beating up a punching bag in a futile attempt to rid the county of heavy bags or 2) painting without brushes. “It’s not like I know what do on one either.”

“Steve, you’ve been on dates,” Clint protests, “I’ve seen you get dressed up and take a girl out to a formal, or to a movie or something. “

“It’s not dressed up if it’s how I dress normally. And they aren’t dates, at least I don’t think they are. I’m just helping out a friend.” Steve looks legitimately worried, as if he’s just realizing now that he may have misinterpreting previous events. 

“Yeah, the type of helping out that leads to them kissing you.” Clint has watched this many times, Steve walks a girl back to the dorms and she leans up and tells him how great the night was, and Steve is overly polite and always shocked when she kisses him goodnight. And even more when she tries to convince him to come up for the night. And Steve is great with women. Likes them, respects them, but he’s oblivious when it comes to flirting or romance.

“Those women were coming on to me?” Asking Steve for dating advice really is a bad idea, but asking Steve for somewhere to go, well, that’s another story. Steve brightens when Clint asks if there is anything interesting going on during the weekend. He makes it a point to figure out everything that’s going on, and can plan a night out like a pro, “Well, if you want dinner, that diner downtown is doing a local food night. Farm to plate, decent music.”

It’s at least a place to go.

**Thor and Jane**

"Barton, are you hiding a girl in your apartment and just now getting around to wanting to date her?" Jane says, unwrapping a straw while she waits for Thor to get back to the table with his trays. Two trays, because Thor would gladly eat an ox for lunch if he put his mind too it.  
   
"I'm not hiding Darcy," Clint objects because he isn't. Darcy just doesn't leave the apartment much, and with work and school, Clint doesn't get out much thats not on campus and shit, man, he's the creeper. He's got a girl in his spare bedroom that cooks and cleans and says nice things to him and no one besides Coulson knows her or has seen her, "I just haven't had the chance to bring her out anywhere." he continues weakly.  
   
Jane looks unimpressed. She also accepts the kiss on the cheek that Thor gives her when he sits down and still manages to look unimpressed.  
   
"We will bring Darcy out, I promise. But right now, I have no idea what to do for a date. What do you guys do?" He asks, or maybe whines. Possibly both, because he's running out of people to ask and he's still as lost as ever.  
   
"I have a key to your place, Barton." She replies, "I'll stop by soon."  
   
The noise that Clint makes when he drops his face into his arms is best described as inarticulate.  
   
Thor looks up with his food, "I often accompany Jane to her lab, and keep her company as she works." he tilts his head, "I am not sure that's what you mean by dates, though, since I am often working on my own assignments." Because yeah, Thor is like, in Public Policy or something, and he's going to be king of the world by sheer size intimidation and politeness.  
   
"I am surrounded by abnormal people." Clint says into the table, "None of you all know how to date."

**Bruce**

“Clint, why don’t you just ask Darcy what she’d like to do?” Bruce says rubbing at his eyes. Clint has probably been running off at the mouth for at least twenty minutes, and he has absolutely no idea what he’s actually said. 

Ostensibly, he’s hiding in Bruce’s office to do his own work, and also discouraging students from utilizing office hours. Bruce finds his students aggravating when he’s not in the classroom, and as he has not successfully lobbied himself away from a 3/3 teaching load because he has an anger management problem, Clint is providing a useful service. In reality, he’s still just as lost about this whole dating this as ever, and that outline is not writing itself. From the look of it, Clint isn’t writing it either.

“Well, that’s just…” Clint pauses and blinks, “sensible and well-mannered.”

“Which is why you didn’t think of it?” Bruce smiles, “Common sense not all that common, is it?”

“Not among our friends, it doesn’t seem.” Clint replies, “Thanks man.”

**Darcy**

“What do I want to do?” Darcy says, and she’s looking really lovely, her hair piled on top of her head after Clint comes in from a long work night, “I don’t know, somewhere where I can put on eyeliner and something that swishes and not feel like I’m overdressed and a movie?”


	5. Chapter 5

Clint’s pretty well known for steady hands. They are kind of his things. He’s not cool under pressure or anything like that, but he can just tap into this well of calm when it comes to working with his hands. Tonight, his palms sweat, and he can’t stop moving his fingers, knuckle by knuckle. He stretches his hands out and then curls them into balls. It’s just a date, he keeps thinking, not the end of the world. No expectation other than having a bit of fun together.

But it’s been practically Darcy’s whole week though. Clint’s moved around his schedule, and Darcy knows that. She had caught her bottom lip in her teeth, smiling and looking down when Clint had told her that he’d gotten Saturday night off, and he knew it’s be worth the extra shift he had traded for.

She’s been doing other things too, Phil’s been over and helping her register for classes, trying to figure if she has to do freshman orientation in the fall, despite her starting this summer. Housing forms, since freshman have to live on campus. Phil’s pulling strings to get her into the dorm they work in, even though its the smallest with the largest rooms, and usually only upperclassmen get it. Nepotism does have it’s perks. She hasn’t declared a major yet but is leaning towards political science.

“I dunno,” she says about it, “One thing I was always able to do was turn on the television or read the news online, and see what the world is like and how it all fits together. I don’t want to be a politician or a lawyer,” which is good, because she’s too good for that sort of shit, “But there’s something to seeing how people and nation don’t work with each other that makes me want to pick it apart.” That’s as good of a reason as any.

And then Jane makes good on her promise and sneaks in one day, and Clint comes home to find Jane asleep on the couch and Darcy asleep on the couch. “I don’t know where you found her Clint,” she smiles fondly, “But she came in, demanded we go out shopping and when we got back, she took out her laptop and worked until she fell asleep. Can we keep her? I promise I’ll take care of her, keep her fed in pop-tarts and coffee.”

“She does have a boyfriend.” Clint says, “One that I do not want to be on the receiving end of a fist from.”

“We can work out a schedule.” And Darcy smiles so brightly that he really wants to kiss her, but he’s sort of promised himself to wait until they resolve the whole date thing. Somethings you just have to do right. 

So yeah, now its Saturday night, and his palms itch, and maybe the bottoms of his feet do too. It’s never been like this. Of course, he’s also never had to sit through waiting for the girl to get ready to go out. But he’s also never been so domestic with any woman, and never before they were sleeping together. So they do things backwards anyways.

He’s really going to miss this when Natasha is back and when Darcy has to move into the dorms.

Her door opens, “Sorry I took so long,” she says, “ I wasn’t all that sure what I was doing.”

May God bless Jane Foster in her infinite wisdom, because stealing Darcy to take her shopping was the best idea she’s ever had. It’d be easy to make her look sexy, with her curves and her lips and practically everything about her. Instead she looks sweet, her solid blue dress fitting through her waist and flaring out. Clint’s not sure what the neckline is called, the one that shows her collarbones, but with a loose drape.

“Whatever it was, you look really great.” Her lips are deep and red and he wants to close their distance and give in to what he wants, but he settles and takes her hand. Dinner at that place that Steve mentioned — classy enough for what Darcy wanted, not enough to break his budget, and a movie, whatever’s playing when they get to the theatre, since neither of them have any strong feelings on what to see. “You ready?”

There’s a knock on the door, and whoever it is keeps pounding until Clint opens the door, Darcy behind him, stealing one of Natasha’s trench coats from the hall closet. She only had the winter coat and it’s too warm for that now. Seriously, everyone he knows that actually knocks, knows tonight is important. He opens the door to a middle aged woman. Her dark hair is pulled back severely, and her pants are too tight for her frame, like she doesn’t want to admit that she needs to go up just one size. She pulls off a pair of sunglasses, and Clint’s stomach falls. No mistaking the resemblance.

“I’m here for my daughter.” Karen Lewis says imperiously, strolling into the room, bumping past Clint’s shoulder on her way in.

What the hell. Karen tries to grab Darcy by the arm, but Darcy’s quick and shrugs it off, slack-jawed otherwise. “Hey,” Clint objects, “Hands off.”

Karen turns around so fast that her ponytail whips her neck, “I don’t know who you are, except maybe that you’re the reason my daughter ran off. Get your things baby, I’m taking you home.”

Except Darcy is frozen to the spot she’s in, “No,” she says, weakness in her voice, her face going long and distraught, like she can’t believe she’s saying this, “I’m not going back. I’m starting classes in a month.”

“Honestly Darcy, I understand. You’re eighteen and you’re bored, need to rebel a little bit. Well good, you’ve had your fun,” she sneers at Clint, “Maybe even with him, and somehow you had the good sense to do it around your cousin. But now it’s time to come home.” 

Darcy looks down, looks over at Clint, and it’s the first time since she got here that she truly looks lost and desperate. “No, I’m not going back.” She repeats, slower this time. “I’m not going back to your house with you.”

“Baby girl, you know I need you at home. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done and I just can’t handle it all myself. You might not be very good at getting your chores done —“

“Because I was studying.” Darcy folds her arms across her chest, and Clint moves to her side.

“Yes, you did quite a bit of that, I’m so glad I instilled that in you so young. Such a good student, even if it mostly rote learning, never all that good when you have to analyze. But we can work something out at home if you think you need to continue with school. Now grab your things, and don’t think I didn’t notice that you took your fathers bag, I can’t believe you’d do such a thing. That’s one of the few things that I still have of his.”

“Because he left you!” Darcy yells back, “You drove him out because you would lie to him, because you were always picking at him. Dad got fed up and left you and dropped out of my life. And then I never got to see anyone from school, and I could only study and you stole my acceptance letters. I scraped together all the money to take the SATs and apply, even though you wouldn’t let me have a job. You can’t stand the thought of yet another person running from you, so you hid them. I’m not—”

Clint’s hands are steady even after her mother reels her hand back from Darcy’s cheek, where the capillaries flush red on her pale skin. His hands are steady when he grabs Karen by the arm, holding her still, “You are not welcome in my apartment. If Darcy needs to talk to you, she will call you.” Clint’s never dragged someone out the door, thrown them out, but this feels like a very good place to start. Karen is balking and yelling, but he doesn’t hear any of it, not anything specific as he marches her out the door and down the hall to the stairs. Karen tries to follow him back, but he walks her back down the hallway again. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that you don’t hit people? Darcy’s an adult and she can decide when she will talk with you.”

“Ungrateful little whore….” Karen stomps down the stairs and out of sight.

When Clint makes it back to his apartment, Darcy’s curled up sideways on the old, comfortable but ugly recliner, with her legs hanging off the armrest. He sits on the floor, turned towards her and touches her face gently. “Hey. You okay?”

“No.” Darcy simply says. “Thank you. For being here.”

“I just live here,” he traces her jawline, “You need me to call Phil or anything?”

“Nah,” she swings her feet around and slides to the floor as well, and Clint rests his arm around her, “I don’t really feel like going out anymore, is that okay? Can we just stay in? Please?” she leans her head against his, and he really can’t help it anymore. He pulls her close, brushes the hair the hair off her face where it’s stuck to tear tracks and kisses her.

Her lips are soft and open just slightly, enough so that he knows this is okay, and her hand runs up his arm before capturing his hand in hers. She breaks it off, pressing her face into his neck and breathing a few contented breaths, “Let’s watch a movie.”

He knows they stay on the floor, because that’s how he wakes up the next morning, but he doesn’t remember what they watched. He just remembers the noise and the feel of Darcy’s hair through his fingers, a few more kisses for comfort. He wakes up, his head resting against the recliner, and Darcy’s head laying on his outstretched thigh, holding onto him even in her sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize she'd come all this way," Phil blinks through an apology, dropping a chair next to Clint's in at the front desk, "I think I need to think a few more steps ahead when I tell my mother things."  
   
"You told your mother where I live?" Clint draws his brows together and closes his course packet. He shakes his head, "Phil...."  
   
"You think I wouldn't? She's my cousin, and I may have known you before, but we weren't close. Someone else needed to know." Phil justifies to himself, "But I didn't count on my mother caving to my aunt demands to see Darcy."  
   
Phil breathes in harshly and he's as strung tight as a bowstring. In the entire time that Darcy has been here, Clint's seen more emotion in him than in the entire time they've worked together. And there's clearly rage that Phil is suppressing beneath a calm demeanor. It's entirely possible that Phil has always been like this, letting the mask of his face hide his heart and Clint's just never noticed.  
   
"She hit Darcy." Clint says, that anger throttling anything else he might have felt. Anything in the past is past for him, he can be over that, it doesn't have to be with him. But there's always a but, and seeing the damage kills whats left of the kid in him, "She looked about ready to drag Darcy out by the hair." Clint doesn't know how he kept himself from lashing out, but he's glad he did, glad he focused his anger into comfort.  
   
"Yeah, Darce told me that. Thank you." His voice drops, sincere, "I screwed up, Barton, and you kept her safe. I can't begin to imagine what would have happened if you weren't there."

"Few minutes later and we would have been out of the door anyways. Hell of a first date, Coulson.” He stands up, stretching his legs. It’s almost time for the drunks to stagger in with the id’s of their lamentable guests in hand. He does actually have a sign for that time of night, that drunk means you can’t consent, but there’s not much else he can do without risking arrest of his own. On the other hand, he has helped a few men and women not make massively bad life decisions, and as a master of them, he’s happy to help. There’s coffee in the back, and he grabs a couple of insulated cups and pours them both mostly full of the vile concoction that the office of student life will spring for the late night guys. 

He sets one down in front of Phil, and Phil nods his thanks and says, “We just got to get her through the month and then she starts summer classes and moves in here. And no one has to get her room number to her mother.”

Clint doesn’t think Karen is going to stop, she doesn’t seem the type to just release her daughter to the world after trying to keep her tight inside her sphere of influence. It’s not that Darcy is her life, it’s that Darcy is a thing she wants to control, make herself feel better and look better. Have a dutiful daughter, excelling but never straying. It’s not the same abuse he suffered, but it’s almost more insidious. Bruises fade and bone heal but this stays beneath the skin, and doesn’t go away with something as trivial as a few weeks.

He’s just going to hope that Darcy can transition well into college. He’s going to do his damnedest to make sure she has people around her, make it safe, and hope she can take what steps she needs to do. And maybe stay there with her.

When he gets home, there’s a plate of food in the oven, staying warm, and Darcy spread out on his couch, curled in a blanket and watching the television with half -glazed eyes that turn brighter when Clint slips in. She pulls herself to sitting, spreads the blanket out over both of them. Clint eats and eats quickly, worried about Darcy’s quiet. She hasn’t said anything, even in greeting, and he worries about how much she’s in her head, or if in her mind she’s under her mother’s roof and banging on the door.

“I talked with Phil,” Clint says after he puts down the plate, “He’s sorry.”

“I don’t blame him,” Darcy says quietly, “I feel like I should blame someone, but not him. He’s always going to do what he thinks is right, and even he can’t account for all the consequences.”

“He’s going to be thinking longer about them now. He’s good with the large scale, but at the person level, he’s still learning the variables.” Clint teases just a little, and Darcy’s hand is suddenly at his shirt, sliding up his stomach seeking surety and confidence.

“I don’t really know how to thank you for everything you’ve done for me. You didn’t know me and you took me in, you’ve defended me and put up with me and you like me,” she emphasizes those last words with wonder and her other hand, “And I’ve been laying here trying to think of a way to thank you besides acting like your maid. Because let’s face it, that’s a little creepy in a deeply regency romance novel sort of way. And I’d look horrible in an empire waist dress.”

Clint’s still fixated on that maid comment because there’s about a dozen nearly pornographic Halloween french maid costumes he saw over that weekend in the dorms that Darcy could do wonders for, and he’s a very bad man. But he also gets what Darcy really wants to say, if not with her words but with where her hands are, and he’s the guy with consent posters practically laminated to the desk. He knows a little something about vulnerability and how it wrecks havoc with trying to regain your equilibrium. 

Still, he’s not that great of a man, and he kisses her. It’s not the sweet and comforting kisses from the other night, but hot and searching, and he lets her hands wander even though his stay wrapped around her. “Why won’t you,” she mutters and catches her breath, “come on, touch me?”

“Haven’t even taken you on a real date yet, babe,” he says, taking her head in his hands, “What, you think I’m easy or something?”

She laughs gracefully and with a certain measure of relief, “I’m going to keep kissing you then, as practice for whenever we actually date then.”

“Well, if you insist.” Because this is okay, this is fun and without any expectations they both can relax into each other. It’s a very long day in classes, his mind wandering to the salt of her skin in the crook of her neck and how her hair feels soft in between his fingers, but it’s the sort of day that's worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm thinking there's just one, MAYBE two chapters left of this to go. I apologize for the slower updates, but I just started a new job and it's eating my brain.
> 
> as always, you can find me at [](http://twistedingenue.tumblr.com>%20my%20tumblr</a>)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally drew this to a close. It's come a long way from just a little piece of fluff to distract me from harder things I was working on. Big thanks to [mischa bell](http://mischaduesouth.tumblr.com/) for a very quick beta job on this section.

“How in the world did I get so much stuff?” Darcy sits down on the bed. It’s covered in a layer of clothing, and she pulls a shirt out from underneath her. “Didn’t I have a duffle bag and a backpack and that’s it when I got here?”

“That and a very good set of feel sorry for me puppy dog eyes, they worked by the way,” Clint replies back, still hanging out in the doorway, interfering only when Darcy comes across something that’s actually Natasha’s and interfering before Darcy has a chance to pack it away.  

There’s been certain perks of having your girlfriend live with you, the easy access for affection, her cooking and the general companionship while Tasha’s been away on her semester abroad aside, Darcy herself is a perk. Maybe Nat could go away again and more good things can come his way.

“Will this all fit in a dorm room?” she asks, biting her lip, trapping it against her teeth. Clint looks around the room and while it’s more than what she came with, there’s still almost nothing. He moved in with more as a freshman, even if it was mostly archery gear. Darcy has a heavy winter coat, and a suitcase worth of clothes, two books she loves, an assortment of toiletry items that Clint doesn’t know how they got into his apartment, and a microwave that Stark claims he found outside of the school of engineering. With a gift receipt.

Darcy doesn’t even have a blanket. She doesn’t have sheets. Clint is letting her leave his apartment without the basics of college life. Does she even have flip-flops? She’s going to catch some weird disease without flip-flops if the girls showers are anything like the boys. Of course they are like the boys, college girls are just as disgusting, they just hide it better. Clint’s mind skips over a few dozen rational things to say or do right now, going instead into a bug-eyed glare at Darcy and his mouth runs over, “You don’t have much of anything, Darce.”

Darcy doesn’t really have the ability to go cold, but she does sort of sink into the bed more and disappears into the layers of clothes and bedding, “I really don’t,” her face twists into horror, “oh my god, what am I doing? I ran away from home without having anything. What if I need my social security card? What if I need to prove I exist?” She rubs her hands over her eyes, her forehead, her hair, slicking down the waves and pulling at the ends, “Clint, what if I can’t prove that I exist?”

“Did you get into Bruce’s stash?” He asks, coming to sit beside her on the bed, “Cause if you did, we need to have a talk about doing that shit without me.”

“I didn’t get into Bruce’s stash. I hear enough warnings of what he’s like without it.” Darcy shudders, “Clint, take this seriously.” She sits upright and rests her chin on his shoulder. “At some point I’m going to need those things, I’m going to have to see her again… at home, where I can’t just kick her out!”

“But you can leave,” Clint stresses, “You’ve already done it once, I’m sure you can do it again. And when you need those things, that paperwork or your favorite knick-knack, I’ll come with you.” Clint realizes he absolutely would, and that’s a level of commitment he’s never had to make before and it sets him scared for a moment. But Darcy’s head tilts into his, and her hair is soft against his cheek. The touch is reassuring for both of them, almost chaste for all that it’s intimate.

She turns it into a kiss, hard and needy, and if she wasn’t in the middle of packing or if he weren’t doing laundry right now, he’d do his best to wrinkle the clothes on the bed. Then again, Darcy doesn’t make any other move beyond the kiss and light fingers on the back of his neck.

“I got you?” she asks, her voice wavering and uncertain. It’s been easy to forget that Darcy’s eighteen and next week is when she starts college. She’s so young, and he would never pick himself for a first relationship or really any relationship, but it’s like they are learning together. That’s pretty cool.

 

* * *

 

This shouldn’t be so nerve-wracking. They are just women. Women who seem to like and respect other women. That Darcy and Natasha are actually going to meet is just the natural consequence of time. It is, however, his best friend and former whatever meeting his current girlfriend. His current girlfriend that has been sleeping in Natasha’s bed. They’ve made out on that bed. Clint really shouldn’t think about that. That is the wrong place for his brain to go.

But it’s going to go there anyways. Because he’s seen Natasha naked and he has a real good idea of what Darcy is going to look like, but he’s going to keep that little vision to himself.

Mostly, it’s anti-climatic. Natasha comes in with Steve, who picked her up from the train station and carried most of her stuff, and takes it all to her room before she even says a word to Clint. Darcy’s eyebrows rise up from the kitchen counter where she’s making dinner (some voodoo with crescent rolls. Clint gains five pounds just looking at them) and says, “Well, that’s comforting.”

“Give her a moment,” Steve says, “She’s so jet-lagged she doesn’t know where her feet are right now.”

Darcy presses her lips into a thin line and puts turns her attention to the coffee maker, grabbing something other than the jet-fuel like coffee beans that Clint prefers.

It’s a full ten minutes before Natasha emerges from the bedroom, in new clothes and her hair impeccable. Darcy pours the first cup of coffee from the pot and hands it over to her.

Natasha accepts, taking a quick sip to test for the temperature, “Everything in my room is where I left it, but not exactly where I left it.”

“It’s your room, but I did have to put my stuff somewhere,” Darcy shrugs, “Things may have gotten moved around.”

Natasha considers this, taking a longer drink of the coffee, “It’s good to meet you Darcy.”

 

* * *

 

“I have to start my shift,” Clint kisses her cheek, and doesn’t let go of her hand, “Phil’s on the late shift too, if you need anything, we’re right downstairs.”

Darcy’s heart pounds just a little too fast, because even with the knowledge that the two safe people she knows are in the lobby, her side of the dorm room is just a little too empty. Sheets on the bed, bed on risers, and her winter coat one of the few things in the storage bin under her bed.

She can call it streamlined and clean, minimalist, but nothing will ever make her forget that its really her starting her life completely over.

“Right downstairs,” Clint reminds her, pressing a kiss to her mouth. It’s too soon to say the things she thinks she feels, but the slow and steady progression of their relationship is an anchor. Her hand stays in his until he pulls himself away with sad whine and he leaves, fingertips lingering as long as possible.

When he’s gone, Darcy is alone. Her roommate has moved in before, Clint says she’s going into her sophomore year but the sort that doesn’t want to go home in the summer. He admitted that he pulled a few strings to make sure that Darcy had someone sort of decent, he’s met the girl through archery things and she seems pretty cool. Okay, Clint’s exact words were, “She’s like twelve and impressive” which is high praise.

But looking over that side of the room, with it’s high lofted bed, the closet door open and showing clothes that Darcy never would never have been able to get, much less buy, and just the sheer amount of stuff, she feels a little lost. Like she can hear her mother telling her it’s not worth it and to go back, but she swallows that down, picks up the hand me down laptop from Phil and tries to enjoy the quiet. She belongs here, she earned this all on her own and she’s got people in her corner. It’s going to be fine. She’s going to learn to function as her own person, not her mother’s, not an extension of Phil or even Clint.

When the door opens, she doesn’t hide her jolt. And the other woman, who looks about Darcy’s age, but athletic and adorable, black hair and bangs, jolts too at the new person in that room. But she relaxes and smiles as she puts away her gear, opening the other side of the closet. Darcy can see now that her clothes look overflowing only because the entire other half has a locked storage container for her bow and quiver.

“Hey, cool, you moved in. I’m Kate and this is probably the last time this room will be this clean.” Kate says with an easy smile.

“Darcy,” she replies, “And I think I can handle that.”

  
  



End file.
